


When You Rise

by BatMads



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Fluff with a dash of angst, M/M, Victor has Trust Issues, Victor's parents mentioned, Yuri is just trying to do nice things, Yurio is Angry But Also Helpful, happy ending I promise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-17
Updated: 2018-09-17
Packaged: 2019-07-13 13:47:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16019180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BatMads/pseuds/BatMads
Summary: Do happy endings really exist? After watching his parent's marriage fall apart, Victor has his doubts, which are heightened when Yuri seems to take a step back from their relationship...





	When You Rise

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chrome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/gifts).



> Ahhhh! So I am a forgetful bean and I completely forgot to post this before I went to work this weekend, but this is the fic I wrote for [@catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) for their first prompt. The title (and a lot of the story really) is inspired by the song ["Golden Slumbers/Carry that Weight."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T71MYh8kqZc)
> 
> I had a lot of fun writing it and I hope you enjoy it!

On Sunday, the sun broke over the skyline and through the tall windows slowly, stretching its golden fingers across the bedroom in a long and lazy yawn, a gentle, prodding reminder that perhaps it was time to wake up. Victor was tangled in the sheets, limbs wrapped around Yuri, who was still dozing. For a long moment, he just lay there, awake but not awake, breathing in and out in a gentle rhythm and listening to Yuri doing the same. With every breath, the hairs at the nape of Yuri’s neck, where Victor’s face was buried, shifted, ticking his nose and waking him up a little bit more. Eventually, it all amounted to some tipping point, and Victor rolled away from his fiance, blinking blearily as he dragged himself into the land of the fully awake.

Sunday. Oh, Sundays were the best days. No practice. No need to worry, just lazy, lovely Sundays. Once upon a time, Victor had gone stir-crazy on Sundays, not certain what to do with himself when he wasn’t honing himself into a better skater than he had been the day before. But now...oh, now Sundays with Yuri were quickly becoming one of Victor’s favorite days of the week.

As the sun continued to rise, he pulled himself out of bed, planting a light kiss on Yuri’s temple before he did, and then slipped out of the bedroom into the main living area. First order of business on Sundays: make breakfast for Yuri. Yuri, to Victor’s immense amusement, had actually been shocked to discover that Victor knew how to cook when they had started living together. But Victor had been living on his own since he was nineteen, when _Maman_ and _Otets_ had split up. He had taught himself how to cook slowly, doing his best to remember standing in the kitchen at _Maman’s_ side when he was younger and her favorite sous chef.  Now, making Yuri breakfast every morning, getting to show off that hard won skill, was one of Victor’s favorite things. Especially on Sundays, when he could take all the time he needed to be as elaborate as he liked.

When he was finished, he set everything onto a tray and carried it into the bedroom. Yuri was just starting to stir when Victor walked in, blinking at the golden morning light, now coming in through the floor-to-ceiling windows on his side of the room in full force.

“Hello, lovely,” Victor said.

Yuri pulled himself up, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and then gave Victor a bright, dopey smile.

“Hi,” he said.

Happiness unfurled in Victor’s chest, soft as a new spring flower. This. This was all he wanted--all he had ever wanted. Yuri reached up and kissed him once Victor got near, and if unadulterated joy had a taste, a feeling, a shape, it was this: Yuri’s lips on his, Yuri’s fingers sweeping through his hair, and the morning glowing gold around them. In the back of his mind, Victor resolved to hold onto this moment forever.

\---

On Tuesday, it rained, sleek and silver against the windows. The sound though, was not what woke Victor. What woke him was Yuri’s absence in the bed besides him. He reached over and...nothing. Yuri’s side of the bed was just, empty. It took Victor a second to puzzle out that he was not dreaming, that this was not a nightmare, that the last year had not been the work of his overactive imagination. For a long moment, he just lay in bed, his arm stretched out in the empty space besides him, sheets already cold from how long Yuri had been gone. He listened to the rain, watched it streak down the windows and blur out the world beyond them. It was easy to imagine, in this moment, that the real world did not exist, that he was some foreign traveler out on some grand adventure. Maybe James Bond. Maybe a lost prince. Hard to say, either way.

It was a game he had played with himself often when he was little, stuck in an unhappy household. In the silent pauses between _Maman_ and _Otets_ arguments, he would let his mind wander and present himself with a thousand more interesting alternatives to the life he was currently inhabiting. It was easy to imagine something better when reality did not force its nose so harshly into his life.

At long last Victor sighed and pulled himself out of bed. Wherever Yuri had gone, Victor was determined to find him. Luckily, he didn’t have to look far. Yuri was curled up on the couch, light flicked on besides him, just...writing. Not scribbling furiously, not the careful, slow strokes that Victor had come to associate with Yuri practicing Cyrillic. Just, writing. Even paced in the journal he clutched in one hand.

“Hey,” Victor said, sliding his fingers through Yuri’s hair and he leaned over his fiancé’s shoulder to see what Yuri had been writing. His voice was still thick with sleep. He yawned and snuggled his nose into the crook of Yuri’s neck.

Yuri stilled. “Hi,” he said softly.

Victor felt the vibrations of Yuri’s voice travel through his shoulder through Victor’s nose and into Victor.

Outside, the rain kept falling.

Outside, there was a strange sort of splashing sound as a car went by on the street below.

Reality wiggled its way slowly into Victor’s life. His mind pushed it out very forcefully, irritated by its intrusion.

“What are you doing?” Victor asked. His voice was muffled by Yuri’s shoulder. “Come back to bed.”

“I was just writing,” Yuri said.

Sleep tugged at Victor. The rain was lulling him to sleep. A part of his mind wondered what it would be like to drag Yuri out onto the street and stand in the rain together.

He had never kissed anyone in the rain. It had always looked very romantic and attractive in the movies. He was half tempted to try it with Yuri tonight.

Tempted, if not for how tired he was. He didn’t want to know what time it was.

All the more intriguing why Yuri was awake, then.

“What were you writing?” Victor asked.

He wondered if Yuri could feel the vibrations of his voice, traveling out of Victor and into Yuri. He hoped so. It was a nice feeling, something that tied them together on this little island of light, surrounded by the rain-drenched night.

For a long moment, Yuri said nothing.

Outside, the rain continued to fall.

Outside, Victor imagined that he could hear the difference between the sounds of the rain hitting the roof, versus the street, versus the little rivers in the gutter.

“Just writing,” Yuri said.

Victor was trying very hard not to fall asleep right here. It was a losing battle.

“I love you,” Victor said.

“I love you too,” Yuri replied.

“Come to bed?”

Another long moment while the rain continued to fall. What did the river look like, Victor wondered? The gulf? He suddenly had the very pressing desire to stand in the rain under a clear pane of glass and watch it fall on him without having the blink the droplets out of his eyes. He allowed himself to imagine what it would feel like to go outside and stand in the rain right now, how it would cling to his arms, plaster his hair to his forehead, bead off his eyelashes and kiss his lips.

Yuri’s shoulder shifted as he wrote a little more, and then there came the sound of him shutting the journal and snapping the elastic that held it back into place. The light clicked off, and now Victor drifted in the darkness, with only the sound of the rain and Yuri’s steady breathing to anchor him. Yuri shifted a pressed a kiss to the bridge of Victor’s nose, then stood, pulling Victor up with him. Victor dragged his eyes back open, and in the silvery half-light, cast by the streetlights below through the rain-streaked, windows, all he could see was Yuri’s vague silhouette. It was eerie and wonderful at the same time.

With little resistance, he allowed Yuri to guide him back to bed, allowed Yuri to pull back the covers and tuck him safely back into the warmth of their heavy grey comforter. He snuggled happily into the arms Yuri wrapped around him, smiled softly at the kisses Yuri pressed to his cheeks, and fell asleep to Yuri rubbing slow circles into his back.

Outside, it rained, but in Victor’s heart, the sun glowed brighter than ever.

\---

Clouds clung close to the city on Saturday. Victor shot them furtive glances as he walked to practice. Yuri had been gone when he’d woken up this morning, although he’d left a note on the counter reassuring Victor that he’d only left for practice early. Victor tried not to be bothered by it. Sometimes he liked getting up early and heading over to the rink as soon as he could, too.

Except he hadn’t done that since Yuri had come to live with him.

Except the two of them had established a sort of unspoken routine in which Victor woke up first, made breakfast, Yuri stumbled, wrapped in the comforter, into the kitchen to eat. They kissed. They ate. They started their day _together._

And it was unsettling for that routine to be disrupted, as, generally speaking, Victor did not like his routines to be disrupted unless he was the one doing the disrupting. For all his talk of surprising people, he did crave the certainty that came with knowing exactly how his day would go, and how the next day would come. He had lacked that for far too long growing up, waiting in hushed anticipation to see what Maman and Otets would each be like…

He shook his head, clearing the memory. It had no relevance here. So Yuri had changed things up. That was fine. That could be fine. Spontaneity could be...good. Good for a relationship, good for life, good to keep things a little exciting.

But there was a part of Victor that couldn’t help but feel as he crossed over the river, the rink rising solid and unmovable on the other shore, as though he had been left behind. There was a part of him that wondered if maybe, perhaps, one of the things that he loved most about Yuri was that his fiance loved the predictable march of a routine as much as Victor did, and he couldn’t help but wonder what it meant that Yuri voluntary disrupted something they both loved.

\---

“The pig went home already,” Yurio said behind him.

Victor turned and looked at the younger boy. It was Wednesday. He had always liked Wednesday’s, if only because it was such an interesting word in every language he knew. In Russian, it felt like you were throwing the second syllable, and the first was the wind-up. He had taught himself how to make jumps by imagining he was saying _sreda_ , Wednesday, with his body. Wednesday in French and English was three syllables instead of two. He had always liked that, the little hill in the middle, drawing itself out. He had always thought there was something great and important about Wednesdays growing up because of how long the word was.

“What?” Victor asked.

“The pig,” Yurio repeated, more slowly this time, “he went home already.”

“Oh,” Victor said, frowning.

He glanced back at the rink, where he had been trying to spot Yuri, albeit unsuccessfully, for the last several minutes.

“Are you sure?” He asked.

Yurio rolled his eyes. “Yes. He told me ‘tell Victor that I went home,’ when he left.”

Victor’s shoulders slumped. He had been looking forward to walking home with his fiance. It was a nice afternoon, after all. The rain and clouds had let up, leaving only a wide-open sky and clear sunlight in their wake. He had been planning on taking a little detour today, get some croissants, go sit by the river…

He missed getting to spend quality time with Yuri. Last Sunday they had hardly done anything, because once again Yuri had been the first to rise, and he had been in the shower when Victor woke up. Making a big breakfast seemed less special when Victor didn’t get to wake up Yuri to share it in bed, so he hadn’t bothered. They’d both been so busy lately. The past few days, weeks, months. Their careers and their reality head sneaked it’s way into their lives when they hadn’t been looking. It was something that Victor couldn’t help but resent a little.

“When did he leave?” Victor asked.

Yurio waved a flippant hand and turned away. “I don’t know, ages ago. I’m surprised you didn’t notice. You two are normally so hung up on each other.”

“Right,” Victor said. He scuffed his toe on the floor, grimacing at the way it rubbed against the rubber, before moving quickly to keep pace with Yurio. It was hard to explain why, but he dreaded the idea of walking home alone right now.

At first, neither of them said anything, even when Yurio pushed open the door and they stepped out of the rink and into the beautiful afternoon. A breeze came off the river, tugging on the long strands of both of their hair, gold and silver whipping up in response to the coming summer.

“I hate Wednesdays,” Yurio said.

Victor glanced over at Yurio in surprise. He had been content to walk in silence, but if Yurio wanted to speak...Victor wasn’t going to stop him.

“Aren’t you visiting your grandfather this weekend?” Victor asked. “Now it’s only two more days of waiting.”

With the official season over, vacations were starting in earnest. Mila had been in Nice last week, soaking up some well-deserved days in the sun. Victor was still toying with the idea of surprising Yuri with a trip to Hasetsu sometime this summer. And Yurio was visiting his grandfather every other weekend.

Yurio snorted. “That’s a dumb way of thinking of things.”

“Maybe,” Victor sang.

There was a smile dancing on his lips now. Since he had met Yuri, Yurio’s constant grumpiness had become more amusing than anything else to Victor. He felt called, somehow, to show his young friend that the world was not as bleak as Yurio wanted it to be.

They reached the other side of the bridge and paused at the traffic light. If Victor had been able to walk home with Yuri, he would have turned right here, he knew. There was a little park at the end of the street where the rivers converged. Yurio studied the traffic in front of them bleakly.

“Why do people leave?” he asked.

For a moment, Victor’s mouth hung open. It was a strange question coming from Yurio, and it was hard to come up with a good answer without context, but…

His parents had announced they were getting divorced on a Wednesday. Victor remembered because they’d been eating pasta for dinner, and Wednesday nights used to be pasta nights in the Nikiforov household. He had been at practice all day, so he hadn’t been able to help his mother make anything, and he had come home and sat down for dinner, and that was the first thing they had said to him.

Not, how was practice today, Victor?

Not, have you come up with ideas for you programs this season, Victor?

We’re getting a divorce.

They hadn't been wearing their rings. That should have been his first clue, he supposed, but he had been young, and caught up in a world filled with happy ever afters, and it hadn’t occurred to him to think that underlying unhappiness could ever lead to anything more.

He pulled himself out of his daze. Yurio was staring at him.

(He and Yuri were fine. He and Yuri were fine.)

“I don’t know,” Victor said. “Maybe because they’re not happy.”

His heart was beating furiously. He needed to get home. He needed…

“My mom left on a Wednesday,” Yurio said quietly. “She left me at practice and I waited hours afterwards until _Dedushlya_ came to pick me up.”

“I’m sorry,” Victor said quietly.

“It’s nine years ago next week,” Yurio said.

He was very carefully not looking at Victor now. The light changed, and the two of them set off across the street. Victor didn’t know how long it had been since his parents had split. He hadn’t really talked to either of them since he’d moved. It had to have been ten years of phone tag and missed birthdays, at least. He didn’t know what either of them were up to these days. He hoped they were happy. He hoped they had found what they were looking for.

He didn’t want that to ever become him and Yuri. He wouldn’t let it.

“Are you going to turn here, asshole?” Yurio asked him.

Victor cocked a brow. Really, someone should watch Yurio’s language. It was getting out of hand. Yurio just growled when he saw the look Victor gave him.

“See you tomorrow, Yurio,” Victor said as he stepped away. He gave a little wave. “Be safe walking home.”

Yurio grumbled something in response and kept walking. Victor watched him for a heartbeat before he went running after his friend.

“Yurio!” he called.

Yurio glanced back, petulance describing every line of his face and Victor paused next to him, panting a little.

“Come over tomorrow night,” Victor offered. “Have dinner with us.”

“What?” Yurio asked.

“Come over tomorrow night,” Victor repeated. “Have dinner with us.”

Yurio scowled at him.

“Please,” Victor added before Yurio could say something foul.

“What are you having?” Yurio asked.

“I don’t know,” Victor said, waving his hand. “Piroshki, maybe. Or pasta. Maybe both.”

 Yurio snorted and turned away again. “I’ll think about it,” he said. “I’ll make the pirozhki, though, if I come. I’m sure you terrible at it.”

“Oh, sure,” Victor said laughing. “See you tomorrow, Yurio!”

His friend only raised one hand in a farewell salute. He didn’t even turn around. But that was fine. That was Yurio. The sun flared bright, still high in the blue sky, and Victor turned back home, heart full of the afternoon and the beauty of the city around him.

\---

The apartment was quiet when Victor opened the door. Well, quiet except for the just audible hissing of the shower. Golden sunshine crept through the big windows in the living room, and Victor let it wash over him as he shut the door, dropped his stuff by the door, and went to find Makka.

He needed to talk to Yuri. He needed to be sure that his best friend, his fiance, his life and love, really wanted this, wanted him, wanted this life of theirs. He didn’t want to sit down at dinner one night and have that just be it. He didn’t want them to grow any farther apart than they were starting to, or as far apart as they almost had this past winter.

Victor found Makka in the bedroom, curled up for a nap at the end of the bed. Victor settled down beside him and started scratching behind the poodles’ ears.

_After the final, let’s end this._

Those words would haunt him for the rest of his life, Victor knew. That, coupled with his own past, would leave his wondering all too often if their love mattered as much to Yuri as it did to him.

Once upon a time, there had been a Victor Nikiforov who had believed in love and happy ever afters and enduring happiness. A Victor Nikiforov who had helped his mother make dinner and had not hidden in his imagination.

Once upon a time, there had been a Victor Nikiforov who had that faith in the goodness of the world shattered and who had hidden his grief in gold medals and surprises and skating routines. Who had numbed himself to sorrow and walked the world alone, believed he could only ever walk the world alone.

Now there was a Victor Nikiforov who wanted to believe in love again, but wasn’t really sure how, who didn’t know if it would be swallowed one day like the sun in the middle of a St. Petersburg winter when once it had flared as bright as the sun in a St. Petersburg summer.

In the bathroom, the shower ceased it’s hissing, and a moment later Yuri walked through the bedroom door, underwear already pulled on, carefully drying off his hair with a towel. He started when he saw Victor sitting there.

“Hello,” Yuri said carefully.

Victor gave him a small smile. He was not good at starting difficult conversations. He felt like his heart was about to fall out of his mouth.

“What’s wrong?” Yuri asked, peering at Victor carefully. He stopped trying to dry his hair.

Victor took a deep breath. He swallowed his heart and hoped it would stay in his chest.

“This is forever, right?” He asked, picking over his words carefully. “We’re...we’re always going to be together?”

The towel hit the floor. It landed there with a soft thud and all Victor could do was stare at it. Unexpectedly, he felt tears prickling in the back of his throat. Then Yuri’s hands were on Victor’s cheeks, guiding him to look up into Yuri’s soft brown eyes. Distantly, Victor reflected that he sort of thought Yuri looked better without glasses sometimes. It made his eyes look bigger, it made Yuri look sweeter and more wonderful in general.

“Of course,” Yuri said. “Why...why wouldn’t we be?”

Victor opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He could still feel tears in the back of his throat and he never had figured out how to talk around them. Even when he was little, and he had cried all the time because he had known in his soul that _Maman_ and _Otets_ didn’t really love each other. Every time someone had asked him what upset him though, he lost his words. He only had tears, and tears weren’t always an excellent way to explain yourself to someone.

So he just shut his mouth and shut his eyes and leaned into one of Yuri’s palms and tried not to cry because Victor really, really hated crying.

People wanted you to be alright, and fine, and not ask difficult questions, and crying showed them that there was a part of you that violated all of those expectations.

Yuri pulled him closer and the neat, clean, socially-acceptable side of Victor squirmed at being comforted, but the broken and messy side of him sunk into it, and how loved he was.

 _You are loved,_ he told himself. _You are loved._

The reminder didn’t stop his heart from feeling hollow, though.

Yuri pushed fingers in his hair, and even though it kind of hurt because dry hair and wet hands don’t mix well, that was nice too. A kiss was planted on Victor temple, followed by soft words muttered in his ear.

“I love you,” Yuri said. “I’m always going to love you. Nothing can ever, ever change that.”

“What if it does though?” Victor said.

He didn’t know where the words came from. The tightness pricking in his throat had disappeared, but the tears were still there, threatening in the corners of his eyes.

“It won’t,” Yuri said firmly.

“Everyone always says that, though,” Victor said. He sounded very, very small. Which was fine, because he felt the same way. “And you’ve been avoiding me--”

“I--” Yuri said, pulling away--“have not been avoiding you.”

Victor made himself open his eyes and look at his fiance, tears or no. He mustered what bit of bravado he had left and quirked his brows in the same way _Maman_ used to when she knew he was fibbing. Yuri’s shoulders slumped.

“Okay, I’ve been avoiding you,” Yuri said, “but I had a good reason. I wanted to do something special.”

Words failed Victor again, so he just frowned. Thinking about _Maman_ had put the prickly tears back in his throat, because when he thought of _Maman_ he thought of _Otets_ and how the two of them used to be happy with each other and how slowly they had fallen apart.

Everything fell apart, eventually, it seemed. It was the way of nature. His parents, Yurio’s family, Yakov’s marriage, his skating career, one day Yuri’s skating career--

“It’s our anniversary,” Yuri said.

A cute blush crept across his cheeks and up his ears when he had said it. It would have made Victor smile, if Victor hadn’t been contemplating the inevitable break down and decay of the universe and everything he loved in it at the moment.

“You know,” Yuri mumbled when Victor didn’t respond, “of when you officially became my coach. After Hot Springs on Ice. I wanted to do something special to commemorate it, and I needed to get everything together, and I couldn’t do it while you were around because I wanted it to be a surprise because you showing up was a complete surprise and surprises are sort of our things now and--”

Yuri cut himself off, still blushing. His ramble, however, had started tugging Victor away from his bleak evaluation of the progression of life. He found words again.

“Oh,” Victor said.

Maybe not words. But a word. Or at least, something that could pass for one.

“I’m sorry I was avoiding you,” Yuri said.

“It’s fine,” Victor said.

He was testing out syllables. First one. Now two. Maybe he would go for five or six next.

Something in Yuri eased at Victor’s reassurance.

“But really,” Yuri asked. “What’s wrong?

It was so, so difficult to explain, especially now as the feeling receded. The feeling had been a wave, and Victor had watched it grow until he knew it was a wave, well and proper, but now it had broken on the shore, and was returning back to the ocean, and Victor was uncertain if it had ever really been a wave at all, or what had caused it to come crashing towards him.

He shrugged. Not the best form of communication, but better than tears. For Yuri’s sake, he tried to reach for words though, because Yuri had not seen the maybe-wave before it had hit, and if Victor wasn’t certain what had caused it, then Yuri was definitely didn’t know either.

“Everything falls apart,” Victor said, trying to convey his most recent understanding of the universe.

Yuri frowned. Victor took a deep breath, pushed the prickly tears aside, and started over.

“I don’t want to fall out of love with you,” he said this time, “but what if I can’t help it? What if that’s just...the way things are? What if one day we wake up and we’re not happy with each other? What if you--”

His voice broke and Victor stopped himself before he became a bawling mess. Yuri reached out again and touched Victor’s cheek again. Lightly, at first, and then Yuri was pulling Victor close once more.

“I am never going to leave you, Victor,” Yuri said gently. “And I’m never going to let you leave me, not without a fight, anyways. I love you too much for that.”

Victor let out a breath and it felt shaky. Yuri rubbed big circles into his back and Victor closed his eyes. He never wanted to leave this moment. Wait. No, amendment, he wished they could have this this moment without him being a mess, and then that was the moment he never wanted to leave. But what if the moment couldn’t exist without the mess? Would they even be here if it wasn’t for Victor’s eyewitness understanding of how two people fell out of love with each other? What had happened to that version of Victor that had existed when he was younger? The version that believed in true love and happily ever afters and didn’t have to try, in vain, to convince himself that they were real?

“That’s--” Victor started. His voice was rough like sandpaper. Yuri cooed a little shush at him.

“Don’t tell me that’s what everybody says, Victor,” Yuri said. “Because we’re not everybody, are we?”

Yuri pulled back to look at Victor. Reluctantly, Victor opened his eyes again. Yuri was close enough to kiss. He’d be close enough to kiss before, but that had been from a different angle, and before Victor had worked himself into A State. For a moment, he let himself imagine it, how it would feel to leave this conversation behind like if it had never happened at all, to kiss Yuri and see where that got him. To kiss Yuri and forget and forget and keep on forgetting.

But he could never forget, because this was a weight that would always be pressing on him. Pressing until it kept him from breathing, and then there would be no more Victor at all.

So Victor made himself look at Yuri’s eyes instead of Yuri’s lips.

“No,” Victor said quietly, “we’re not.”

Yuri smiled, sweet and dazzling all at once.

“Anytime you need me to remind you of that,” Yuri said, “I will.”

A warm glow seeped back into Victor’s heart. He managed a little smile.

“I’m sorry I’m such a mess,” he said, starting to pull away.

Yuri shrugged.

“We’re both messy. That’s how it is, sometimes. Life isn’t all perfect days and golden sunshine. Sometimes, there’s a little darkness too. What matters is that we’ll both be here--always--to get each other through, okay?”

“Okay,” Victor said.

Yuri stood. It wasn’t a perfect conversation. A little weight still lingered. Perhaps it always would. But he had Yuri to share it with, now, and even if Victor hadn’t explained himself completely in this moment, it was fine, because it didn’t keep Yuri from understanding. Perhaps even, Victor really would tell Yuri everything. Someday. About _Maman_ and _Otets_ and what it had been like to grow up in a house divided.

Tell Yuri about the existential doom that filled Victor some days when it felt inevitable that he end up like them.

For now, though, Victor just smiled the dopey, heart shaped smile that he knew Yuri liked.

“So,” he said. “What’s the surprise?”


End file.
